


Everything Nice

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Luke and Leia Switched, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Beru always wanted a little girl of her own.





	Everything Nice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiditallbefore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/gifts).



"We always wanted a little girl of our own," she told Owen, watching the moods cross his face like misty clouds prefacing a sandstorm.

"Of our own," he told her back, emphasizing the last word.

They wouldn't have children of their own, though, not without a lot more medical intervention than they could hope to afford. At best, they could put enquiries around Mos Espa, trusting their luck to buy some poor baby out of slavery the way Owen's father had acquired his wife. That only opened up the knowledge that if they even found someone, neither could bear to leave the rest of the child's family to suffer the way poor Shmi had after her Anakin left, and they'd scrape together the money to buy them all. And they didn't have enough money to free one baby, much less a baby and family, too.

Times were hard all over. Kenobi had said as much when he'd contacted Beru yesterday. "Hard times lead to hard choices," had been his exact words, after his condolences over Anakin's sudden death and the news of the death of Anakin's wife.

"She's our family. She only has us now." Beru rocked the little girl in her arms. "You know we can't send her away."

"I don't know anything." Owen frowned again, his eyes dropping to the small bundle. Babies, even free babies, cost money and time. One of them would have to give her care, taking that pair of hands away from the farm.

Beru rocked her again. Leia, Kenobi had said. A light, airy name, not the name of a farming girl. Beru formed the word into her mouth, watching the girl's sleepy eyes as she lay in perfect contentment. She didn't know anything about her strange wizard of a father, nor about her mother, whoever she'd been. Beru suspected the pretty girl who'd last accompanied Anakin to Tatooine might have given this child the dark hair already growing on her soft head, but Kenobi hadn't said and wouldn't say.

He'd said, "She needs her family."

"She's staying," Beru said, and Owen nodded.

* * *

Leia's small fingers were perfect for poking around the insides of a vapor condenser. Learning what to do in there took a lot more time. She asked millions of questions, not just about which knob to unscrew or which diode to reconnect, but why the sand formed the patterns it did after the winds blew by, and why did the sky change color depending on where you looked, from the pink-purple horizon to the icy blue of the half sky to the blue so deep it was almost black overhead.

"Because," Beru told her, and together they would look up the information, because Leia always asked questions Beru herself had never thought to ask. "You can read this time," she told the girl, coaxing Leia to sit with the battered datapad they'd picked up in Anchorhead. Beru got out the comb again and dealt with the tangles. Every morning, she'd coax Leia's short hair into a neat style, and every day by lunch, it was a mess, caught up with the same dirt or sand Leia had been digging in today.

They'd run into Cora and her girls the last time they'd gone to Tosche Station. Both Cora's daughters had long, neat braids running down their backs.

"I think we'll let your hair grow out."

"Grow out of what?"

"Your head, silly. Would you like to have nice, long hair?" She asked this right as the comb found another tangle and Leia squirmed.

"No!"

"It might help."

Leia pouted, but Beru stopped cutting her hair after that. Within the year, Leia had a neat braid of her own which wasn't budged by the wind one bit.

* * *

One night after Beru had kissed her and sent her to bed, Owen watched Leia's door close. "She's an odd one. Did you see, she handed me the tools today before I asked?"

"I saw." Beru had seen more than that, and for longer. Leia knew things before she ought to know them. Her reflexes were uncanny. When she played with the other children around the settlement, Leia could run just a little faster, jump just a little higher. Owen hadn't met his brother back when they'd been children. There was no way to be sure she was showing the same kinds of signs her father did way back when. But there weren't many other explanations.

Beru said, "We could contact Kenobi."

"No. He's done enough." Owen didn't trust him, hadn't trusted him the day he'd brought Leia to them, and wasn't about to start trusting him now that he'd cultivated the reputation of some mad hermit who lived out in the wastelands. If Kenobi was a Jedi as they suspected, here on Tatooine in hiding from the Empire, he'd chosen a good disguise. If Kenobi really was some half-crazed wanderer like his reputation said, he might have killed Anakin himself to steal the baby. But why give her to them? Beru wanted his advice on raising what looked to be a little Jedi child. Owen thought they shouldn't risk it.

* * *

"Why didn't you adopt me?"

The question came as Leia helped make supper. She cut up vegetables, and didn't look at Beru.

Beru paused, and returned to her stirring. "Why do you ask?"

Leia shrugged. "Someone asked me."

"At school?" Leia nodded. "What did you say?"

"I said it wasn't important." She looked at Beru. "It's not, I guess."

She checked the pot, and then took the knife from Leia's hand, gently setting it aside before clasping Leia's small fingers in her own. "I wish we could have. I wish it every day. But when we took you to the magistrate's office when you were a baby, they wanted five thousand credits to start the adoption process, and three thousand more at the end."

Leia's eyes grew huge. "Wow."

"I think," Beru said, a little sad and a little angry, "it's to keep someone from stealing a slave and adopting them. I don't know for sure. But we couldn't produce your birth record, and that raises the cost."

Leia considered this. Her little pulse jumped between Beru's fingers. "Was it destroyed on the spice freighter?"

"It must have been."

Leia had a lot of questions about her parents, and Beru had invented the simplest answers she could think of. Owen's brother, another Skywalker from Shmi's side of the family but certainly not that boy who'd gone off to be a Jedi, had been a navigator on a spice freighter that his wife piloted. They'd been killed when Leia was still an infant, and it was a miracle they'd left her here to visit with her uncle and aunt before making that last run which had obliterated them, the ship, and all records of her birth.

Beru said, "Guardianship documents only cost fifty credits. The magistrate has those on file and I have a copy here. You can show your friends if you want."

"No." Leia squeezed her hands. "Like I said, it's not important." Then she let go and took Beru in a big hug, arms wrapped tightly around her. "I know who my family is, no matter what the documents say."

Beru returned the hug, blinking back unexpected tears. "Good."

* * *

They couldn't keep Leia away from any ship that could get airborn. Even the landspeeder's antigrav fascinated her, and Beru found her under the chassis countless times in attempts to up the torque. Or lower it. Leia was always unclear, muffled by the body of the landspeeder when she was talking. Beru knew about servomotors inside a condenser. She had no idea how to soup up a T-16.

"I don't want you spending time with that Darklighter boy," Owen said at dinner. "He's going to fill your head with ideas."

"I've got my own ideas," Leia said. "Biggs just likes how well I can fix an engine for him."

Beru made a worried face. She and Owen had found each in other a perfect match, as small as the dating pool had been in their youth. Leia's friend group was even smaller, and all the boys would be noticing how pretty she was even under the sand or grease, or both if she'd been out testing her ship again. The Darklighter boy might appreciate Leia's mechanical skills, sure. Beru was certain those weren't her only attributes he liked.

Leia was growing up. She longed to fly out there, darting between star systems and seeing the galaxy. Tatooine was her home, but she'd never be content as a farmer, nor as a farmer's wife, and for all the ideas Biggs Darklighter might offer, that was the life he'd wind up giving her.

Encourage her to stay here, and take up with someone local for a quiet and dull life together, and wilt under the hot suns? Encourage her to chase her dreams out there in the great beyond, and risk meeting those same pursuers Kenobi had brought her here to escape, and maybe never return to Tatooine again? Either choice would break Beru's heart. She remembered this conversation with Owen's stepmother, years ago, one of the few times Shmi had spoken of her Ani to Beru. No matter if your child stayed, safe but sad like an heirloom, or left, distant and shining like a fresh star, there was no path that didn't end in tears.

Now she said to Owen, "I'm sure Leia will make the right decisions."

* * *

She wasn't sure about these new droids, not at all. What was the chance of a droid with the same designation as Owen's batty old protocol droid falling into the hands of some Jawas? The old model hadn't been this bright gold, but the prissy voice hadn't changed an iota from when Beru had visited the homestead all those years ago. The little astromech looked familiar, too, exactly like that R2 unit Anakin had brought with him.

Leia said over dinner, "He says he belongs to someone named Obi-Wan Kenobi. Do you think he's related to old Ben Kenobi?"

Kenobi. Threepio. Anakin. Beru felt the little room crowd with ghosts, and all of them stared at the girl she'd raised as her own daughter in all but name. Owen, not looking at Beru, told Leia to wipe the little droid's memory.

"No."

"You heard me, Leia. That droid is faulty in his wiring. Wipe him and put him to work."

"There was a space battle overhead a few days ago. We watched it. I think the droids were running away from the Empire. I think old Ben might have an idea why."

Her face was set in a stubborn glare, the same way her grandmother's face set when she intended to do something her own way. Her father had probably made that face, too. Leia would do as she thought best, and if she and Owen fought her now, their little girl would only do it harder.

Beru rested her hand against Owen's. "Fine," she said, before he could argue again. "We'll go see old Ben tomorrow at first light." She turned to her husband. "All three of us will go. We have a lot to talk about."

* * *

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi," said the little blue hologram. The young man's face was solemn as he begged Kenobi to take the plans inside the little astromech to Alderaan. Beru stared at him as fixedly as Leia did. Beside her, Owen sat in a dejected heap in one of the few chairs Kenobi owned, watching the hologram's call for help.

All these years, Beru had believed his story that the little girl he'd brought them was Anakin's child. A thousand little moments big and small came back to her. Leia had so many of Shmi's expressions. When she was angry, she showed the same temper that had slain a whole village during Anakin's brief visit with them last time. She'd inherited his piloting skills, and she showed gifts that only a young Jedi ought to exhibit, hidden as her talents were.

But the boy in the recording was Anakin's very image.

Leia watched the image fade, and she saw the haggard looks on their faces, and she wasn't foolish. She looked at Beru, then at Kenobi. She folded her arms.

"Tell me everything."

"Everything is a long story," Kenobi said. He glanced at Owen. "I don't suppose you've told her much of it?"

Beru said, "You haven't told us much, either. You told us Anakin was dead. You told us we were Leia's only family. You suggested," she said, offering an apologetic face to the girl she'd raised, "not telling her that her father was a Jedi."

She could see the ire rising inside Leia. Anakin's temper, for sure.

Owen cut across it, speaking for the first time since R2 had started playing the recording. "You didn't mention she had a brother."

"Ah," Kenobi said, noting the climate in the room. "Leia, you should sit down. We are going to be here a while."

Beru took a chair. Leia crammed in next to her. Kenobi settled back, his eyes no longer looking out on this time, and began to speak.

Leia took Beru's hand, and squeezed.


End file.
